Lamentations Of The CJN 

With the retirement of Justice Amiru Sanusi from the Supreme Court bench yesterday after attaining the mandatory 70 years, the number of Justices in the apex court has dropped from 14 to 13. This development comes on the heels of repeated calls and complaints by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, (CJN), Justice Tanko Muhammad, that he and his colleagues in the highest court are overworked.
Only recently were such calls repeated by the CJN when he sought the intervention of the National Assembly in the working conditions of Supreme Court Justices and asked for the amendment of the appellate jurisdiction of the Court in the 1999 Constitution (as amended) to prevent all manner of appeal cases from terminating at the apex court.
The Chief Justice claimed that the number of cases pending before the Supreme Court was overwhelming and taking its tolls on the health of the Justices. According to him, the amendment had become expedient for timely dispensation of justice and to reduce the mental stress the heavy burden of pending appeals was weighing on the Justices.
The 1999 Constitution (as amended) provides for 21 Justices as a full complement of the apex court bench, a status the court has never attained. We recall that the number of Justices of the Supreme Court reached 17 on January 18, 2019, when the then CJN, Justice Walter Onnoghen (rtd), swore in Justice Uwani Abba-Aji to the apex court bench.
In June 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari requested the CJN to initiate the process of appointing additional five Justices to the apex court to make the full complement of the constitutionally-provided 21 Justices. But the President has failed to respond to a list of four recommended Justices submitted to him since October 2019.
Nearly every Chief Justice of Nigeria had at one time or the other deprecated the excess workload in the Supreme Court. It was in consideration of this challenge that the Electoral Act initially made the Court of Appeal the final court for all election matters in the country except presidential election petition which terminates at the Supreme Court.
However, following conflicting Appeal Court judgments on gubernatorial election petition cases, the National Assembly, in the 2010 amendment of the Electoral Act, made the apex court the final destination for all governorship election matters in the country. But the amendment expanded the burden of the Supreme Court Justices.
We appreciate the ugly predicament judges of the apex court face and deeply sympathise with them for the arduous task they have to bear. However, we think that rather than lament publicly, the CJN should approach the National Judicial Council (NJC) which oversees the affairs of judges in the country for appropriate legislative interventions.
The Tide believes that a far-reaching reform of the Supreme Court is long overdue. So, to be included in such a change should be a timeline for the determination of all cases in court regardless of the tier. This will ensure a speedy dispensation of justice in the nation’s judicial system.
The slow pace of justice delivery and accumulation of pending cases are regrettable and frustrating. If the regular saying that “justice delayed is justice denied” is anything to go by, then, we have a plethora of denied justice in our land. Some matters remain up to 10 years or more before their adjudication at the Supreme Court.
It is worrying that despite complaints from the CJN and stakeholders in the judiciary of the scanty number of judges, the Supreme Court bench is yet to have its full complement of justices. We demand that the President acts on the recommendation of NJC on the elevation of some justices from the Court of Appeal to the apex court.
We are in sync with the CJN to limit the number of cases the apex court can adjudicate. Allowing almost all cases to get to the Supreme Court without limitations constitutes a burden on the nation’s legal system, particularly considering that even in advanced democracies like the United States of America (USA) and Canada, only constitutional and important matters get to the Supreme Court.
With a population of about 340 million people, the USA, for instance, has only one federal Supreme Court comprising nine members with several others in the states to handle matters arising from state laws. Similarly, Canada, a complex country of over 35 million with English and French speaking people residing on a land mass 10 times bigger than Nigeria, has a national Supreme Court and others in the provinces.
We recommend that the US and Canadian models be adopted and made workable in Nigeria. The Supreme Court has to be unbundled and established in each of the six geo-political zones to hear sundry matters, while the apex court in Abuja will be concerned with constitutional issues. In contrast, the current membership of the court should be increased from the constitutionally-provided 21 members to accommodate a few more panels.
Nigeria’s  justice system is beset with many determinants. The apex court in particular has been congested with frivolous  and scandalous cases. Any wonder the CJN had once claimed that the case diary of the court had been filled till 2022 following over 500 pending cases. The Supreme Court should be a policy court to focus mainly on constitutional issues while most of the works should be done at the lower courts.